Our world is changing, literally right beneath our feet. And the speed of change — highly dangerous change — is getting faster and faster.
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Climate change is accelerating the melting of the world’s mountain glaciers, according to a massive new study that found them shrinking more than twice as fast as in the early 2000s.
The world’s glaciers lost ice at the rate of about 255 billion tons annually from 2000 to 2011, but that quickened to about 346 billion tons annually over the next decade.
And in the last few years, the melt has accelerated even more, hitting a record 604 billion tons lost in 2023, the last year analyzed.
“Glaciers are apolitical and unbiased sentinels of climate change, and their decline paints a clear picture of accelerated warming,” said Gwenn Flowers, a professor of Earth Sciences at Simon Fraser University in Canada.
William Colgan, a glaciologist for the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, said that many places — such as those in the U.S. West — are seeing extra water now from fast-melting glaciers and benefiting from the boost, but that will soon disappear as the glaciers melt beyond a point of no return.
“If you’re losing 5.5% of the global ice volume in just over 20 years, clearly that’s not sustainable,” Colgan said. “That’s going to catch up with you.”
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FULL ARTICLE -- https://apnews.com/article/glaciers-melting-climate-change-ice-loss-af8ff74dbbb9aabdc537adcbc9eb6010
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#Science #Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis
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Climate change is accelerating the melting of the world’s mountain glaciers, according to a massive new study that found them shrinking more than twice as fast as in the early 2000s.
The world’s glaciers lost ice at the rate of about 255 billion tons annually from 2000 to 2011, but that quickened to about 346 billion tons annually over the next decade.
And in the last few years, the melt has accelerated even more, hitting a record 604 billion tons lost in 2023, the last year analyzed.
“Glaciers are apolitical and unbiased sentinels of climate change, and their decline paints a clear picture of accelerated warming,” said Gwenn Flowers, a professor of Earth Sciences at Simon Fraser University in Canada.
William Colgan, a glaciologist for the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, said that many places — such as those in the U.S. West — are seeing extra water now from fast-melting glaciers and benefiting from the boost, but that will soon disappear as the glaciers melt beyond a point of no return.
“If you’re losing 5.5% of the global ice volume in just over 20 years, clearly that’s not sustainable,” Colgan said. “That’s going to catch up with you.”
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FULL ARTICLE -- https://apnews.com/article/glaciers-melting-climate-change-ice-loss-af8ff74dbbb9aabdc537adcbc9eb6010
🧵 1/2
#Science #Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis
Climate change is shrinking glaciers faster than ever
A new and massive study finds that climate change is melting the world’s mountain glaciers faster than ever. They are now shrinking at more than twice the speed of the early 2000s, according to the study in this week's journal Nature.Seth Borenstein (AP News)
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Excerpts from an article at the BBC about the same subject as above…
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The world's glaciers are melting faster than ever recorded under the impact of climate change, according to the most comprehensive scientific analysis to date.
Mountain glaciers – frozen rivers of ice – act as a freshwater resource for millions of people worldwide. But since the turn of the century, they have lost more than 6,500 billion tonnes – or 5% – of their ice.
And the pace of melting is increasing. Over the past decade or so, glacier losses were more than a third higher than during the period 2000-2011.
The rate of change in some regions has been particularly extreme. Central Europe, for example, has lost 39% of its glacier ice in a little over 20 years.
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FULL ARTICLE -- https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy4ly8vde85o
#Science #Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis
Climate change: World's glaciers melting faster than ever recorded
Mark Poynting (BBC News)Hugs4friends ♾🇺🇦 🇵🇸😷 hat dies geteilt